A pilot from Luck-a town in beautiful, bucolic Wisconsin-suffered minor cuts and bruises after his single-engine plane hit a power line and crashed in a cornfield in western Wisconsin. Roger Spooford, 40, was doing the usual monthly check of Northern States Power Co.`s high-tension lines when he was distracted by small plane above him and flew into a Dairyland Power Co. wire. Afterward, he walked a quarter of a mile for help.
EURO-DISNEY COSTUME ROW The French Association of Little People wasn`t thrilled by Euro-Disneyland`s request for help to recruit dwarfs ”to parade around in Mickey costumes.” The group`s leader, Patrick Petit-Jean, calls the request
”an affront to our dignity. Why only think of us for that sort of job when there are also jobs for gardeners or secretaries at the park?” A Euro-Disneyland spokesman says the park just wanted ”qualified” people.
THE MOSCOW DREAM An electronics repair worker was feted Tuesday as the 100,000th owner of a private apartment in Moscow. ”I`ve never even owned a car before, much less an apartment,” says Leonid Ponomaryov, 52, after receiving roses, a brass clock, phone and applause at a City Hall ceremony for taking ownership of his family`s two-room downtown apartment. Moscow is trying to privatize the city`s 3 million state-owned apartments but the response has been slow until recently. Ponomaryov did it ”because I thought there really was a chance to get some sort of property, to control it, and maybe get a bank loan by using it as collateral.” Later, he admitted making that answer up. ”Honestly, I don`t know why I wanted to be an owner. Although, who knows, maybe I will get a bank loan.”
CAROL BURNETT HONORED Carol Burnett was the winner of the 15th annual Jack Benny Award for her comedy. The award was given to Burnett in Los Angeles Monday by Vicki Lawrence, who appeared with the comic on ”The Carol Burnett Show.” The ceremony showed excerpts from ”The Carol Burnett Show” and her feature films, including ”Friendly Fire” and ”The Four Seasons.”
SADDAM HUSSEIN TURNS 55 The free world`s enemy during the gulf war, Saddam Hussein, attended a children`s party in Baghdad to celebrate his 55th birthday on Tuesday. Like last year, Hussein opted not to go to a party hosted by his lieutenants in his hometown, Tikrit. His birthday is a national holiday in Iraq. But in London, anti-Hussein demonstrators tried to deliver 17,000 black coffin-shaped boxes to the Iraqi Embassy, symbolizing the number of people missing in Iraq. MICHAEL JACKSON SPEAKS Michael Jackson says in the May Ebony magazine: ”I really believe that God chooses people to do certain things, the way Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or Mozart or Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King is chosen. And I think that I haven`t scratched the surface yet of what my real purpose is for being here.” The entertainer says his goal is ”To give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance.”
